Pure Writerly Moments 2 (Short Stories, Essays, Book Reviews, and More)

Pure Hungerly Moments or What Will You Suffer for?

A writer must live off his stomach...or so it has been said. Steven Pressfield says many important things about the practical concerns of writers in his excellent book "The War of Art." He writes earnestly about suffering, about loneliness, being deprived of money and food. 

So, why cover these issues again? Why dwell on the negatives of being a writer?

Why? 

Because writerly moments are also hungry, lonely, poverty-stricken moments. 

To be a writer means often to work in a void. I go days, months, sometimes, without talking to anyone honestly about my writing, about what it feels like to have writer's block or to edit something and have it sound like overweight drunks belching, farting, and rambling into the night. I rarely talk to anyone about what it means to have my work reejectted over and over and over...

[Until you're an expert and feel qualified to write a book about it!]

It makes me think that I'm some crazy hobo who talks to himself. 

Perhaps entrepreneurs know this feeling. Elon Musk said being an entrepreneur was like eating glass and staring into the abyss. Writing isn't like eating glass. But the abyss part is real. It feels like yelling and having your voice echo. 

Too many conversations in your head. Too many conversations in your head...

And then, you get hungry...

I'm lucky. I've been lucky. I've had regular jobs. Hunger is not something I know. It's coming, but not yet.  

But I'd like to think I could go hungry...that I could endure some missed meals just to scribble some words that end up months later in the editing process sound like drunk hobo fornicating in the night...and that it's all okay because my art makes suffering okay. 

I'd like to think I could work any stinking job to keep my writing habit up, but I'm not sure. I'm always one step away from chucking it all in to go to business school or be a lawyer. 

Reejecttion is also something real...

Lately, I won't even write a short story to submit to a magazine. If you look in my eyes you'll see too much heartbreak.  I'd rather try to convince some bystanders to read one of my finished books or hassle a family member into commenting on one of my blog posts. 

There was a point when I was in high school when I kept all my rejection slips in a box. I said to myself, "When I get my first acceptance letter, it will make all these rejections letters seem all that much sweeter." 

I had a smile on my face...I knew that it was only a matter of time. 

But that box just kept filling up. That box was bulging with rejection slips.

Five ****ing year later, I got my first acceptance letter. It didn't make those rejections sweet at all. It just reminded me that it had taken me nearly five years (years 16 to 21) to place one ***damn story for twenty dollars in a magazine. (They paid me the twenty dollars, not the other way around...I ended up taking contributor copies instead.)

Eventually, I learned to wise up. I started throwing away the reejecttion slips or avoiding rejection altogether. Elon Musk shows up with a plate of glass. Five years of rejection slips or chew on this glass? he asks me. Suddenly, that plate of glass starts looking pretty good. Damned good indeed! 

And that is the question -- the stoic question: What will you suffer for? 

I miss a meal one night to really hone my senses for this question. I need to suffer a little bit to answer this question. To answer this question honestly, I probably also need to stop sleeping and miss breakfast. I need to suffer like those lean years 16 to 21...when I should have been dating, partying, and going crazy and having the time of my life...I was collecting paper slips and staring into the abyss... 

I can't suffer for a rejection slip. It's just a ****y piece of paper. And I can't suffer for some subpar story. I can only suffer for something truly great. The kind of book that will make me forget that I missed a meal altogether. 

What will I suffer for? Sage and the Scarecrow...The Ghosts of Nagasaki...Statues in the Cloud...even Reejecttion...I'll suffer to write a short essay about suffering...

What will you suffer for? 

I will suffer for one more contribution to this collection.